---
# System prepended metadata

title: 'Teach and Get Paid: What You Need to Know About Creating Courses'

---

# Teach and Get Paid: What You Need to Know About Creating Courses

![Course breakdown](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1515378791036-0648a3ef77b2?ixlib=rb-4.0.3&ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2370&q=80)

[TutHub](https://www.tuthub.io/) is all about finding the best programming tutorials online. However, instead of consuming the tutorial, have you considered flipping the script? **How about creating a tutorial instead?**

Whether you're a student, a tenured professional, or an engineer with some extra time, **you should absolutely consider building your own course**. You learn a tremendous amount while teaching, and you can earn meaningful money in the process. In this article, I'll cover the most popular platforms that course creators use, and how to pick the right one for you.

I’ve published a course on LinkedIn Learning, created 200+ videos on my monetized YouTube education channel, and built the Android curriculum for Codepath. In total, I make several hundred dollars a month from the content I’ve created. Courses typically contain several hours of content (30 minute minimum), and can be published within weeks.

COVID has dramatically accelerated the trend toward self-paced, online learning, both for companies and individuals. As a result, many content platforms are willing to pay top dollar for high quality, engaging courses. After their blockbuster $4B IPO in 2021, Udemy announced that more than 50K courses were published *per year*. Creating and selling an online course has never been easier – you can jump on this trend today to generate meaningful passive income or even replace your day job.

A glimpse of what’s possible: Udemy has several courses that have accrued millions in course sales, Skillshare reports that “top earning teachers make $100,000+ each year”, and Pluralsight announced their first millionaire online teacher way back in 2013.

If you’re getting started as a course creator, I recommend the following platforms, broken into categories:

![Course breakdown](https://i.imgur.com/1sbPasW.png)

- **Assisted platforms**: Upfront payments, instructors must be approved: Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning
- **Democratic platforms**: No upfront payments, no approval process: Udemy, Skillshare

If you can work with an assisted platform, start there – my vote is LI Learning based on my experience. If your content is very niche, or you aren’t able to work with anyone at Pluralsight or LI Learning, then explore the democratic platforms.

I personally know instructors who have found success with each of the 4 companies listed above. These platforms are continuously looking for additional instructors (no need to be a professor at Stanford or MIT), and they’re transparent about how you can succeed. None of these companies require a full-time commitment, and in fact, most of the content comes from part-time teachers who are supplementing their full-time job. Codepath is also amazing but much narrower and smaller.

The assisted platforms (Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning) are geared toward experienced professionals: instructors are vetted and assigned a staff member to ensure that you produce a high quality course for inclusion in their catalog. The upfront payments range from $1000 to $5000, and royalties depend on course performance. With the assisted platforms, you are able to build your brand as an expert, and you are guaranteed a minimum payout. However, producing courses with these companies will take longer because of the process overhead, and you won’t get as much control over the content topic.

As the name implies, the democratic platforms (Udemy, Skillshare) have fewer barriers to entry for course creation. You are free to create any course you’d like, but you’ll face tougher competition – Udemy added 50K courses in the last year, while the LI Learning catalog has 16K courses total [1]. There’s also no guarantee on your earnings, – I couldn’t find stats around median earnings for creators, but I’d bet they’re quite low (< $20). 

Since there is no central authority curating or limiting content, the most successful instructors in this category create many courses in the same area, unlocking huge earning potential that wouldn’t be possible with the assisted platforms.

Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning, and Skillshare are all subscription products, so your payout is determined by the proportion of viewing time that your course contributes. You need students not only to start your course, but also to keep watching. Udemy is unique in that each course is sold individually, so your payout is a percentage of the revenue generated. Keep in mind that courses are frequently deeply discounted, and Udemy can take a hefty cut of the revenue [2].

## How to create a successful course

Like everything else in the internet world (followers, revenue, influence), the vast majority of earnings go to a very small subset of creators. How can you improve your chances of being a successful instructor?

Building a high quality course is an obvious prerequisite, since star ratings and student reviews are heavily weighted inputs for ranking your content. Make something you’re proud to show your friends and family, both in terms of content and production quality! 

For the course topic, you should identify something that (1) is in high demand and (2) doesn’t have huge competition from existing creators. If you’re reading this, you probably already have some highly leveraged technical skill to satisfy #1.

Finding a niche without excessive competition is trickier. For example, knowledge of AWS is in high demand, but many courses already exist in this area. I have 3 pieces of advice here:
1. Catch a new technology early, such as a new product within AWS. Use a tool like [marketplace insights](https://www.udemy.com/instructor/marketplace-insights) from Udemy to identify opportunities.
2. Identify a popular course on one platform and port it to another platform (e.g. Skillshare to Udemy).
3. Cater to a different audience. Could you make an AWS course for executives, or salespeople, or French speakers?

## A note on alternatives

If you haven’t sold an online course before, I highly recommend using one of the platforms discussed above, but I wanted to mention a few other options for completeness.

The lowest-friction approach to publish content is YouTube. As the 2nd largest search engine in the world (after Google), YouTube is a powerful way to reach interested students. Although ad revenue is far less lucrative compared to directly selling content, YouTube is a popular way to build a brand. Many educators (and creators more generally) use YouTube as “top of funnel” marketing, with the goal of getting people to subscribe to their email list, download their app, or sell courses on the above platforms.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are many self-service platforms focused on letting you create, market, and sell online courses on your own: Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific. These platforms work well if you have an existing audience, or if you want more control over the user experience. However, they also charge a fixed monthly cost, so most creators prefer to simply leverage existing marketplaces that provide the audience.

## Conclusion

There is a huge opportunity for developers who can combine their programming ability and communication into a compelling course that thousands or millions of students can benefit from. In fact, the people who are the most effective teachers often turn out to be the most successful software engineers. 

The profession of software engineering is much more than just writing code. I've seen repeatedly how talented developers hit a wall in their career growth simply because they're unaware of the other skills required. That's why I started [Taro](https://www.jointaro.com/) to provide engineers with the insider advice on career success. Join today for faster onboarding and promotions! 

[Rahul Pandey](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/)
Founder at [Taro](https://www.jointaro.com/)

[1] LinkedIn has 16.4K courses across 7 languages: https://learning.linkedin.com/product-overview
[2] Udemy has recently started Udemy Business which is their B2B effort, and the revenue model here is similar to the other platforms I mentioned.